Alias’ rhythmic tapping of his fingers against the keyboard was the only sound accompanying the slow, melancholic notes of a saxophone. He leaned back in his chair, eyes scanning the text he had been crafting for the past hour. He wasn’t writing for the public—this was meant for testing a handful of minds. The future architects of Pegged.

He reread the opening lines:

"Both Bitcoin mining and participating in the Mega Millions lottery are, in essence, gambles. They involve staking money on an uncertain outcome, where the probability of a meaningful return is minuscule for an individual participant. However, while Bitcoin mining can be approached as a mathematical lottery, Mega Millions is purely a game of chance. From a purely statistical standpoint, mining Bitcoin is a better investment than buying a lottery ticket. But when evaluated economically, the opposite is true."

He paused. This was an argument that needed careful construction. He knew that whoever read this would not just analyze the numbers but also the philosophy underlying his reasoning. He lit his pipe before continuing.

"A Mega Millions ticket has a return-to-player, payout rate of around 50%. This means that, on average, for every €100 spent on tickets, the expected return is just €50—an inherent 50% loss. In contrast, Bitcoin mining, at the individual level, operates as a probability-based reward system. A miner competes to solve cryptographic puzzles, and the probability of earning a reward depends on the miner's computational power relative to the network’s total power.

However, here is where the practical and the mathematical diverge. In theory, an individual mining Bitcoin has a much higher payout rate than a lottery over time, assuming optimal conditions. But economically, mining is a money pit unless one has access to: very cheap electricity, high-end ASIC mining processors, and a large-scale cooling and operational setup.

Given the rising difficulty of mining and the costs associated with hardware, most individual miners will never recover their initial investment, let alone make a profit. Their machines will become obsolete before they break even."

Alias sighed, rubbing his temples. He knew he had to address the elephant in the room.

"To mitigate these risks, individuals join mining pools—collaborative groups that combine computational power and distribute rewards proportionally. This significantly increases the frequency of payouts, making it a viable alternative to the zero-probability scenario of solo mining. But here lies the irony: